Posted on 04/22/2024 2:05:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Could our future meals originate from electricity and air? This intriguing concept has become a reality thanks to a Finnish startup.
Recently, Solar Foods in Vantaa, near Helsinki, inaugurated its first facility dedicated to producing food from air and solar energy.
The site is set to produce 160 tonnes of food annually, a development that could significantly reduce the environmental footprint of traditional farming.
The promise of solein
The innovative product at the heart of this venture is solein, a protein-rich powder made from single-cell organisms. These are cultivated using renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which then feed the microbes.
Carbon dioxide is also sourced from the company’s office ventilation system, making the process highly sustainable. Solein is expected to diversify culinary applications, from meat alternatives to dairy products.
In terms of the global food industry, the factory’s output may be small, but one of the company’s main aims right now is to prove that the technology works, which would be a huge leap in transforming food production methods.
Sustainable food production
The small footprint of Solar Foods’ facility contrasts sharply with conventional agriculture’s space requirements.
The environmental benefits of this technology are profound. Traditional agricultural practices, responsible for about a quarter of all global carbon emissions, could see a significant reduction as land previously used for farming could be rewilded, which in turn would trap carbon.
Bridging old and new
Despite potential market challenges, the co-founder and CEO of Solar Foods, Pasi Vainikka, remains optimistic about the integration of solein into the global food market, anticipating approval in the US towards the end of this year and the EU by the end of 2025, including the UK.
He envisions a harmonious coexistence of traditional farming and innovative food technology, presenting it as a century-defining opportunity for the meat industry.
Despite resistance from some politicians in Italy and the US, who assert that lab-grown food is a threat to traditional agriculture, Vainikka advocates the coexistence of new and old.
He assures sceptics that both meat and plant farming can continue to exist with the focus on quality over quantity.
Solein Green is... electricity?
“Recently, Solar Foods in Vantaa, near Helsinki, inaugurated its first facility dedicated to producing food from air and solar energy.”
Kind of like farms do. No?
Not to mention, every plant.
It is like hopium and delusion had a baby.
With your great comment, you won the Internet today!
Stealing it!
wake me up when someone calculates the number of BTU/hour/pound_complete_protein vs same calc for trad farming ...
IMHO....Just another insubordinate human who fancies himself wiser than our Creator and has concocted this wild-eyed scheme to circumvent God’s plan.
Genisis 1:14 - 31 lays out God’s plan for the nutritional sustenance of His human family. Why would I even consider a meal as the article describes when there are delmonico steaks and baked potatos, and lambchops and streetcorn. No contest!
If this is true, colonizing Mars just got easier.
“…land previously used for farming could be rewilded, which in turn would trap carbon.”
I guess all those ag crops don’t “trap carbon.”
Exactly !
Instead of the wise use of the Lord’s Provision, these atheist Bugmen come up with some tech-fool imitation which isn’t as efficient, isn’t as reliable and isn’t as good.
Sure farms convert less than 1% of solar energy per square meter into total plant biomass. Of which less than 5% of that is say corn kernels a incomplete protein for monogastics. So you need another square meters of soybeans to get all 9 amino acids for a complete protein. Growing grass to cattle is ten to one grass to come total body weight and a meat to carcass ratio of less than 50% so fractions of a percentage of solar energy per square meter into meat. Which is then only 50% protein.
Solar panels are 25% efficient at turning solar energy into electrons then scientists here in the USA already have a 90% faraday efficient electrolytic cell that turns water plus co2 into a slew of organic molecules protein is only one of them, sugar , acetate , ethanol being the other’s. Those processes are 18 to 20 times as efficient in turning the energy in a single square meter into food or liquid fuels. Read that again so the magnitude of these achievements sinks in. It’s not about it’s easier to use farms it’s about having 20 times the output per land area of solar panels. Then forget the solar panels and think nuclear power with 50 story building sized warehouses turning water, nuclear power, and CO2 from the air into complete protein, carbohydrates and lipids you know the three things every monogastric needs to grow and live. These types of advanced removes the limit on arable land for food production and also opens the whole solar system to human use. This is literally spacefood. Humans will never be able to take cattle to space the mass balances are not possible to sustain ,spacefood will always be lab grown base ingredients then 3D printed to order.
Calculations already been done here in the USA by a competing group it’s 18 to 20 times more efficient per square meter of solar insolation.
Why solar panels turn 25% of insolation into electrons. Then the electrolytic cells turn 90% of those electrons into organic molecules.
The most efficient land plant is Agave Weber it’s a CAM plant and it’s 1% efficient at turning solar energy into total plant biomass. Every other terrestrial plant is less than that. It should be self evident why these are breakthroughs.
This tech gets humans to Mars and the outer planets. It also removes the limit on arable land. 6 billion people on this planet live in protein deficiency areas the ability to turn thin air and brackish water not even fresh water into protein, c carbohydrates and lipids is nothing short than a paradigm shift. Cost will be the factor not tech. With scale it would be expected to be so cheap with off peak power or busbar nuclear power.
Ask the Canadians for CANDU tech it’s the cheapest on earth they can out 1.8 cents to the plant gate 24/7 with 90% capacity factors. Then ask the Koreans to build that candu they can do it in 60 months from first pour too plant gate power. At one tenth the capex the USA does. $2800 or less per kw capex.
Didn’t your read the article? There will be no farms or ranches, therefore no steaks, potatoes, or corn; except for the elites who can raise & grow their own. For the vast majority of people it will be Solein Green & water or nothing. And if your social credit score is too low - No Solein Green Soup for You!
Solar panels are 25% efficient at turning solar energy into electrons then scientists here in the USA already have a 90% faraday efficient electrolytic cell that turns water plus co2 into a slew of organic molecules protein is only one of them, sugar , acetate , ethanol being the other’s. Those processes are 18 to 20 times as efficient in turning the energy in a single square meter into food or liquid fuels. Read that again so the magnitude of these achievements sinks in. It’s not about it’s easier to use farms it’s about having 20 times the output per land area of solar panels. Then forget the solar panels and think nuclear power with 50 story building sized warehouses turning water, nuclear power, and CO2 from the air into complete protein, carbohydrates and lipids you know the three things every monogastric needs to grow and live.
Thank you for this information. So the important question is: Can you get a cow to eat the stuff and will it fatten them up properly? If not, what good is it?
“I guess all those ag crops don’t “trap carbon.”
Not on a total carbon balance. Traditional crops due to the tilling of soils, pesticides and fossil based fertilizers plus the diesel to plant and harvest are not anywhere near carbon negative they are positive by a good degree several tonnes per acre positive.
You can go to no till or shallow till and put biochar into the soils at that point it’s called regenerative agriculture and it is carbon negative as long as the subsoil is not flipped into the atmosphere by tilling it up. You also get way better yields once the subsurface microbe communities get up and running in all that black earth soil. Less water is needed as well since the biochar holds water in the billions of pores per kg of it.
So to answer your question from a geochemistry expert no traditional agriculture is not trapping carbon. What one feels about net carbon levels is irrelevant given that the process of modern agriculture itself is by definition unsustainable at some point resource depletion will end it’s practice. Be that aquifer depletion from using fossil water at 100 times the rate of recharge. Be it the 8 billion people who all want and need middle class levels of resource access and when they get it burn down the last liquid hydrocarbons in a couple decades. Or no one talks about top soil depletion that deep till agriculture is depleting at 100 times it rate of development. It takes 1000s of years for a meter of topsoil to form and it’s being lost at a shocking rate world wide.
“Can you get a cow to eat the stuff and will it fatten them up properly? If not, what good is it?”
Cows don’t need complete proteins they like sheep and goats have four stomachs and can synthesis via fermentation all the proteins they need. Chickens ,pigs,and humans cannot so we need complete proteins via our food.
So for cattle this particular process is of little benefit it would make dang fine pig and chicken feed. For cattle you tune the process to make acetic acid aka acetate. When cows eat grass their first two stomachs break down the cellulose via bacterial colonies into...You guessed it acetate where the second two fermentation stomachs turn that into bacterial proteins, lipids and acetate is a carbohydrate used directly by the cows ATP cycle. So you can skip the grass to acetate step and just feed cows pelleted acetate, with a nitrogen source such as urea that will then process the rest of steps internally. Sheep and goats will do the same they also can be feed synthetic acetate and nitrogen mixed with a small amount of fiber for digestion function the bulk is needed to push things along so to speak.
food from air water and solar is widely available and tastes good.
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